View full sizeDAN GLEITER, The Patriot-News, 2009The Central Dauphin School District administration building on Rutherford Road in Lower Paxton Township.

But all three voted to keep their 3.75 percent pay increase for the 2012-13 school year, saying that the school board needs to cut something besides teachers’ salaries. The district, the largest in Dauphin County with more than 10,000 students, asked teachers to take a wage freeze again this year.

“We are willing to make sacrifices to keep district educational programs,” said Smee, co-president of the Central Dauphin Education Association, the district’s 900-member teachers union. “But we need evidence that those sacrifices will be put to good use.”

Eighty percent of Central Dauphin’s teachers voted for the pay freeze last year; only 8 percent did so this year, Smee said.

Taxpayers in the district can expect up to a 3.3 percent property tax hike in the 2012-13 budget based on preliminary budget reports.

Even so, the district expects to furlough about 50 employees, school board President Ford Thompson said Monday night at a meeting attended by about 70 people. Karen McConnell, district business manager, said those furloughs would trim $2.3 million from the budget.

The budget remains $3.8 million out of balance even though the board has explored all avenues for cost savings and additional revenue, Thompson said. He said salaries and benefits make up 70 percent of the budget.

“The school district’s payroll is unsustainable,” Thompson said. “We need to reduce payroll by $2.3 million. Furloughs are excruciatingly painful to me and to the board, but we’ve looked everywhere else. We’ve cut all we can.”

By law, the district must post a preliminary balanced budget by May 31 and adopt a final budget by June 30.

Smee, a learning-support teacher at Tri-Community Elementary School, says the school board should eliminate wasteful spending. She said board members should have raised taxes last year but didn’t. Now, she said, the board should consider cutting extracurricular activities and sports before cutting academics.

“Teachers should be the last ones on the chopping block,” she said.

Smee said the teachers union presented the school board with several cost-cutting ideas but got a reply on only a few of them.

Thompson disagreed, saying officials responded to each of the union’s 64 proposals. He said some have been implemented, some were illegal and others would yield no significant savings.

“Not one of the 64 proposals included any type of financial concessions by the teachers,” Thompson said.

Gordon and Royer, Central Dauphin East Middle School teachers and district employees for 25 years, said that if the school board had raised taxes last year, the deficit wouldn’t be as high as it is.

“Asking us to give up our pay raise is the easy way out,” Gordon said.

Royer said the district should take the teachers’ suggestions more seriously.

Two parents whose children attend Lawnton Elementary School said they preferred a tax increase to having that school be closed. A study last year identified Lawnton and Chambers Hill elementary schools as targets for possible closure; no decision has been made.

Raegan Camuso added, “The kids are our future. We need to invest in them now. The school board knew for years that the district would have to pay more into the retirement fund. They should have been raising taxes all along.”

Central Dauphin, like school districts across the state, is in the midst of a financial crisis.

Energy and health care costs have skyrocketed. Revenue is flat because of rising unemployment, falling wages and weak home sales.

The district’s state-mandated contribution to 1,600 employees’ retirement plans will increase from 8.65 percent to 12.22 percent next year, an increase of about $2.6 million, from $5.9 million to $8.5 million, McConnell said.

In January, the school board approved a $155.4 million 2012-13 preliminary budget that called for a property tax hike of 3.3 percent, which would add $54 to the school tax bill for the owner of property assessed at $117,000, the district average.

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